Further, I strongly suspect that the typical demographic of award booking service customers is not the FT crowd. If I have a stockpile of US miles, I might naively go to US Airways' website, try to book an award ticket to Bangkok and find myself stymied by its limited search functionality. I could call in and wind up with an agent unable to find me flights with availability.

I typically spend several hours to find award inventory and build an award trip (note, I don't run a booking service, so I'm speaking of what I've done for myself and assisted friends on). At the prices many award booking services run, this almost certainly undervalues my time (if not for the fun this hobby provides me). For those uninterested in the intricacies of award inventory, $100-150 sounds pretty cheap.

ExpertFlyer's *A-wide search is a very, very recent innovation. Previously, you needed to sign up for an ANA account to get that information. That's a moderately high bar for someone who has only flown US Airways (and maybe occasionally United). PMUA was nearly as bad (showing only UA and LH metal).

I usually book awards for myself, friends and coworkers. But at times, when I don't have time, I do get help for my own awards. Its a matter of convenience. If I have the time I will book it myself but then sometimes, you value your time spent with your family more than $100.

Depends on the ticket, really. If it can be serviced by a single airline and to a common city, it's probably not _really_ needed, you can generally figure those out with some well published quirks here.

A multi-stop, stopover, multi-airline, or open-jaw mini-RTW with lots of date restrictions/freedoms? You know, the kind you have to call in multiple times? Yeah, outsource that one.

For some people who've done their share of research and reading, it may seem like baby steps but for others it may seem very intimidating.

Now I'm not talking about a simple EWR-BDL flight.
I'm talking about a BDL-EWR-LHR-BOM-EWR-BDL partly in Business, partly in Economy and partly in First Class.
And heck even that seems a little simple to me... But when I first started out a few months ago, it seemed insane why I couldn't find any availability on UA when doing a multi-city search.
It seemed insane when ANA wouldn't allow me to do *A searches if I didn't have ANA miles (had to use a script to get around that, courtesy Wandering Aramean)

But slowly and steadily I got the hang of it. With many thanks to the multitide of excellent people here who helped me.

Now compare this with my father. He has points that he got from cc sign-ups and from flying internationally on various airlines now and then. Most of this is beyond his ability. He's a smart man but this is just not his cup of tea. So I do the booking/searching for him.

Similarly people find that paying someone $100-$150 for really complicated itineraries is totally worth it. It's not about being lazy, it's about convenience.
Some of the really good award booking people know tricks that I don't.So when I have a couple of hundred thousand points with UA, AA, BA, etc, for a convulted itinerary I may find it worth my while just paying $150 to have them search the best route and get the best use of my points.

But that's my opinion. :)

Over the past two years, booking three trips for my wife to Europe (summer 2011, 2012, 2013) I made a lot of mistakes, and did a lot of learning. I mostly know what I'm doing now, but it was a long slow error-filled process.

I think I went from where I knew 20% of what there is to know, to probably 80%. My wife asked me to show her sometime what I learned, and I realized I could, but it would be so filled with exceptions and one-off knowledge (Lufthansa does not release F space to partners until 2 weeks, Tarom doesn't post availability until 9-10 months ahead, US shows no partner space on their website, DL shows only AF and KL, United shows all, BA has huge surcharges through LHR but AA doesn't) that I really had invested a lot of time and effort. I'm pretty comfortable that the booking services earn their pay, and that a LOT of people would be much happier leveraging their knowledge than trying to acquire it on their own.

Here is a link to a previous thread on award booking services...http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...ices-list.html

...and others don't "get" why anyone would pay someone else for such simple "baby steps" things as interior/exterior painting, landscaping, meal preparation etc etc..

we are all different... and have different skills and experience....

You may think booking awards is terribly simple... I would bet that many folks do not find it so at all... and given the work/time I have spent on my own award "prep"... I agree that $100-$150 sounds quite reasonable for a complex itin....

Given my hourly rate of pay I should actually NEVER spend the time to research/book awards myself! I imagine that applies to a LOT of folks here

(I tend to enjoy the process so that has its own reward...and again, I imagine many other folks here feel the same)

*A is easy. Psssh.

I was inquiring about how people actually use them.

It is easy, just tedious. And if you don't spend a lot of time on flyertalk you definitely don't know the ins and outs.

I mean it just feels like I'm missing something. Maybe it's the way they blog about. Like I'm pretty sure I'm as knowledgeable as most of the bloggers. I don't mean to be hypocritical, but for a simple RT YVR-HKG,
you plug TPAC routes +/- 4 days and watch results:
LAX/SFO/SEA/YVR-ICN/HKG/NRT
There ain't anything in J in the next two weeks!
And then OW F:
YVR/ORD/SFO/LAX-NRT/HKG

Nothing, nothing nothing (on the dates I want)!
And that took 1.5 hours of combing through EF, NH, JL, BA, and awardnexus.

As the proprietor of one of the largest Award Booking Services, I wanted to say a few things. First, to OP's concerns:

For most awards, I need the following info: full legal names, gender, birthdays, account info and pin/pw. For AA awards, I don't even need account info, gender, or birthday.

Then I put an award on hold, and you book it with your own credit card. In some situations, it is not possible to put an award on hold. In those cases, you can choose between giving me the credit card info by phone, which I shred afterwards, or calling in to book the award yourself with step-by-step written instructions.

Now, to the value proposition:

At $149 for two passengers on one award, my price, almost everyone gets incredible value from a good award booking service.

First, it will save you tons of time. Any time you have to get into a phone call with the awfully-trained agents of a few airlines, you are staring at an hour. What do you value your time at?

Second, it will save you taxes and fees. My personal record is saving two people almost $2,000. In many cases, I will save $50 in phone fees by using phone-ticketing tricks.

Third, you can add free oneways and extra legs. You may know the rules for all airlines in this regard. We do.

Four, you will not have to think about which of your 5 types of miles/points is best for the job.

If you just want a domestic oneway on United, an award booking service would be a waste of your money. But if you want anything with any complexity, and you aren't a complete expert yourself, you will get good value.

Finally OP made another interesting point: "And, also considering most services operate blogs, isn't their service the exact opposite of what their blogs attempt to provide?"

The short answer is yes, which is very interesting for me to ponder. If you read and understood every post on my blog, you would basically have the same award-booking acumen I do. I am giving away for free what I charge for. I can't think of other businesses that do that.

Altruistic reason: the main purpose of milevalue.com is not profit.

Selfish reason: It turns out to be a successful strategy because it advertises my acumen and draws in more potential customers.

I tried using Ben's service earlier this year. Very poor customer contact experience from an associate of his. No reply to my emails after the initial inquiry. I canceled my request and still received no reply or contact.

I like his blog, but the award booking service needs attention.
:td:

There's great feedback here from travel booking services. I don't even have a big profile, but I do my family's big bookings and I save them a bunch of $. They know me and trust me so there's some security in that. I think when you go to some small time bookies, you should approach it in a defensive way. Get phone numbers, email addresses, business locations, names, etc. When I do deal with new customers, I'll get passwords and plans that most (and now credit card in is so easily stored on these sites so its especially vulnerable) people want to protect zealously.

Basic things I need to do is set up a general profile so I can organize my clients info very fast. Then, I use my frequent flyer resources to help my clients maximize their trips going forward, promos, proper churning, and savings strategies.

Recent one I enjoyed for myself was hitting Hyatt Diamond status which I used to book a 7 night executive suite at a Hyatt regency @ $135/night inclusive of regency club twice daily/hours dervs all day.

PM anyone if you have any questions or if you're someone who needs a award booking consultant!!

I wasn't aware this existed. I recently burned 4+ hours booking my family vacation to Hawaii in 1st. My issue was the hop from Honolulu to Maui. I would have happily paid someone $100 to $150 to do that work for me.

I think it comes down to how much you value your time. The flip side is that someone who is an expert at this can probably do it in under an hour. I I value my time at $50 an hour and it takes me four hours to do this I can end up a net $50 better off hiring someone. If that person's time is also worth $50 an hour and they can do the job in an hour they end up $100 better off. Everyone wins. I'm having flashbacks to my Economics 101 course many years ago.

I would pay anyone who can help me find avaialbility on SQ F/J using US Air Dividend Miles 200-300 usd gladly :D

Seconded on this. Ben's associate was great initially on booking an itinerary that I found, but I've done most of the work since then myself (such as finding LH F availability exactly 14 days before departure and rebooking it myself over the phone with UA). At one point, I didn't receive any response to my emails (requesting a change in my itinerary) for over a month. :mad:. I'm still not 100% confident that they'll be able to get me the TATL sector, so I've set up EF alerts myself and am using the ANA tool. I would not recommend.

Well put milevalue! PS: it was great to meet you in Chicago!

I am fairly certain I am the only award booking service that does not run a "real" blog.

I do have a blog on my site but I just post interesting tips and offers as I find them. I DO NOT have any affiliate or credit card links on it. I don't want to become a marketing/sales slave for American Express or Chase.

I have booked a lot of awards for myself and others over the years and I want to help others. I am not going to get rich off of it but its a hobby that I can make a little extra travel money doing.

To echo others it really comes down to time value. You can spend 5 hours learning the airline program rules and fighting with phone agents if you like. Same as you can spend 5 hours learning about plumbing and replace your own toilet in your house.

I have many satisfied customers who say I charge too little. There is exactly where I want to be. I only plan to raise prices if I get overwhelmed (which is what any business does!).

I am happy to answer any questions via private message--whether you decide to use my service or not!

Foo